Philippines.- Philippines’ Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources Roy Cimatu announced that Boracay island would reopen for tourism on October 26th after an environmental clean-up. However, casinos are still going to be banned from being developed in the area, as Interior Secretary Eduardo Año confirmed.

“The President had already decided and announced that no construction of a casino on Boracay will be allowed,” he said about President Rodrigo Duterte’s statements earlier this year and added: “The people go to Boracay to swim, not to gamble. So there will be no casino there.”

“Unless there is a law or a proclamation of the President setting aside anything there, any inch of land maybe, then that for all those people to come in. In the meantime, there’s no plan. My order was to clean it up,” Duterte assured during a press conference in Davao back in April. Furthermore, he denied a potential “master plan” and stated that he “just ordered to clean it up because that is agricultural.”

At that time, PAGCOR chief Andrea Domingo said that the Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. casino project in Boracay is not related to Duterte’s statements and assessed: “I see no relationship in that because, again, it’s on the other side… of the area that was closed by the government.” Still, its future is anything but clear.